Lake Shore Road reopens

From left, Grosse Pointe Shores City Clerk Bruce Nichols, Edsel and Eleanor Ford House President Kathleen Mullins, Mayor Ted Kedzierski, City Council members Kay Felt, Robert Barrette Jr., Robert Gesell and Bruce Bisballe, committee member Gloria Anton, Public Safety Director John Schulte and City Manager Mark Wollenweber celebrate the reopening of Lake Shore Road with a symbolic ribbon-cutting Sept. 18 at Lake Shore and Vernier.

Photo by Roy Feldman

GROSSE POINTE SHORES — Lake Shore Road motorists are no doubt relieved to see that construction on the heavily traveled road is largely finished.

Shores city administrators and members of the City Council were on hand Sept. 18 for a ribbon-cutting at Vernier and Lake Shore to mark the reopening of the road after construction this summer had it down to one lane each way from Vernier to Shores city limits around the Milk River bridge.

Although there’s still some ground restoration, work on approaches and irrigation system damage to be repaired, Public Works Director Brett Smith said the paving is complete. According to the city’s engineers, density checks have come back good, which Smith said is a positive sign.

“It’s a big day for us,” Smith told the council during a meeting Sept. 18, after the ribbon-cutting.

The roughly $1.2 million project, which required the cooperation of Wayne and Macomb counties, was largely covered by federal stimulus funds. Last year, the Wayne County Federal Aid Committee approved the Lake Shore Resurfacing Project, as it was called, through the federal Surface Transportation Program-Urban, or STP-U. Smith said federal funds paid for about 80 percent of the project, with the remaining 20 percent coming from the Shores.

Dividing the cost of the project into the number of Shores households, Smith said the Lake Shore work was worth just over $1,100 per household, but only cost each household about $220.

This project essentially completed resurfacing of Lake Shore in the Shores. Thanks to federal stimulus funds, in 2010, Lake Shore was resurfaced and received curb work from Vernier to Moross, at an estimated project cost of $2.65 million. Vernier was also resurfaced from Lake Shore to Shores city limits, at a cost of $340,000.

While the road construction contractors were in town, they had a brief window of time between completing Lake Shore and heading to their next project during which they were able to perform needed repairs on part of Putnam, officials said. Smith said the contractors offered the Shores the same unit prices they had given them for Lake Shore. City Manager Mark Wollenweber said the Shores got “very favorable prices” for Putnam work, which ended up costing the city about $13,000 — money that was available in the Shores’ street fund. Although such a project would have normally gone before the Finance Committee for review and then to the council for approval, Wollenweber said this came up so quickly they weren’t able to follow that protocol.

It would have typically cost about $300,000-$400,000 just to mobilize a crew for the project, Smith said, but since the workers were already in the area, the city could get the work done without that expense.